Robots

Robots in the work place can perform hazardous or even 'impossible' tasks; e.g., toxic waste clean-up, desert and space exploration, and more. AI researchers are also interested in the intelligent processing involved in moving about and manipulating objects in the real world.

Two years ago, Alphabet researchers made computing history when their artificial intelligence software AlphaGo defeated a world champion at the complex board game Go. Amazon now hopes to democratize the AI technique behind that milestone--with a pint-size self-driving car. The 1/18th-scale vehicle is called DeepRacer, and it can be preordered for $249; it will later cost $399. It's designed to make it easier for programmers to get started with reinforcement learning, the technique that powered AlphaGo's victory and is loosely inspired by how animals learn from feedback on their behavior. Although the approach has produced notable research stunts, such as bots that can play Go, chess, and complicated multiplayer electronic games, it isn't as widely used as the pattern-matching learning techniques used in speech recognition and image analysis.

In a laboratory that overlooks a busy shopping street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a robot is attempting to create new materials. A robot arm dips a pipette into a dish and transfers a tiny amount of bright liquid into one of many receptacles sitting in front of another machine. When all the samples are ready, the second machine tests their optical properties, and the results are fed to a computer that controls the arm. Software analyzes the results of these experiments, formulates a few hypotheses, and then starts the process over again. The setup, developed by a startup called Kebotix, hints at how machine learning and robotic automation may be poised to revolutionize materials science in coming years.

In order to achieve the edge computing that people talk about in a host of applications including 5G networks and the Internet of Things (IoT), you need to pack a lot of processing power into comparatively small devices. The way forward for that idea will be to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) computing techniques--for so-called AI at the edge. While some are concerned about how technologists will tackle AI for applications beyond traditional computing--and some are wringing their hands over which country will have the upper hand in this new frontier--the technology is still pretty early in its development cycle. But it appears that still-too-early-yet status is about to change a bit. Researchers at the Université de Sherbrooke in Québec, Canada, have managed to equip a micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) device with a form of artificial intelligence, marking the first time that any type of AI has been included in a MEMs device.

Microsoft is demonstrating greater commitment to robotics by announcing Windows support for the Robot Operating System (ROS) and joining an industrial consortium. ROS is a flexible framework that enables developers to write software for advanced robotic behaviours. While the collection of tools, libraries, and conventions has historically only had official support on Linux, developers will now be able to utilise the tools in Windows 10. The move will see Microsoft work with Open Robotics and the ROS Industrial Consortium to bring the Robot Operating System to Windows. Microsoft has also joined the Consortium, which works to extend the advanced capabilities of ROS into manufacturing and improve the productivity and return on investment of industrial robots.

NVIDIA Isaac platform with Jetson Xavier, a computer designed specifically for robotics.NVIDIA Robots are a well-established part of manufacturing but have the opportunity to unlock new efficiencies in industries such as retail, food service and healthcare. To date, robots have primarily been enclosed or segmented into specific areas to protect people from possible injuries. Today, companies want to integrate robotics into various types of workplaces, but this requires a new design paradigm for robotics. Allowing a robot to move freely in an unpredictable environment requires fast, reliable, intelligent computing within the robot. The ability to deliver this level of complex computing at within a small component, at a low price point has held the robotics industry back.

It's a time-tested science fiction trope, guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of anyone who ever watched The Terminator and wondered, "Is that really possible?" But, in reality, machine learning and cloud technologies are already being used to develop robots that are better, smarter, faster, and more useful than ever before. And it's happening faster than many people think. In fact, cloud technology is proving to be the tipping point from the basic, single-purpose robotics of years past--think assembly line robots, or the machines that vacuum our floors and wash our dishes--to devices that can think, act, and work alongside humans seamlessly. Big Data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and more are now being used to develop robots' own neural networks, making use of today's large data sets to train machines on behavior.

As new technologies mature, new and advanced use cases arise from the fusion of 5G, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the Internet of Things (IoT). This fusion creates a world of intelligent connectivity that positively impacts all individuals, industry, society, and the economy. From now to the year 2025 we are going to witness the evolution and adoption of technologies powered by 5G. These technologies are going to be defined by highly contextualized and personalized experiences. According to a recent GSMA Intelligence report, the number of 5G global connections is going to reach 1.3 billion by 2025 covering 40 percent of the world's population or approximately 2.7 billion people.

ANGELA MERKEL, Germany's chancellor, has a reputation for being dour. But if she wants to, she can be quite funny. When asked at a recent conference organised by Ada, a new quarterly publication for technophiles, whether robots should have rights, she dead-panned: "What do you mean? The interview was also striking for a different reason. Mrs Merkel showed herself preoccupied by artificial intelligence (AI) and its geopolitics.

ANGELA MERKEL, Germany's chancellor, has a reputation for being dour. But if she wants to, she can be quite funny. When asked at a recent conference organised by Ada, a new quarterly publication for technophiles, whether robots should have rights, she dead-panned: "What do you mean? The interview was also striking for a different reason. Mrs Merkel showed herself preoccupied by artificial intelligence (AI) and its geopolitics.

It took me 4 hours and 5 minutes to effectively annihilate the Universe by pretending to be an Artificial Intelligence tasked with making paper-clips. Put another way, it took me 4 hours and 5 minutes to have an existential crisis. This was done by playing the online game "Paperclip", which was released in 2017. Though the clip-making goal of the game is in itself simple, there are so many contemporary lessons to be extracted from the playthrough that a deep dive seems necessary. Indeed, the game explores our past, present and future in the most interesting way, especially when it comes to the technological advances Silicon Valley is currently oh so proud of.